Dog Daycare is More Than Dog Daycare
If you visit this link http://www.pawsdogdaycare.com/Start-Up-Services/Dog-Daycare-Income-Intro... it provides a brief overview of some of the most important ancillary services that you can offer to maximize your revenue. What I find to be shocking is that many individuals have failed to read deeply into these sections as indicated by the page counts at the bottom of each page. This tells me that there are a huge percentage of individuals with a desire to enter this industry that have also consciously chosen to short change themselves out of the potential to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year by broadening the range of services they offer. For what reason I do not know, perhaps some are just intimidated by the thought offering grooming, training, retail and the like. I find this interesting as they obviously have the entrepreneurial spirit to enter the industry, but at the same time are paralyzed by the fear of failure when it comes to offering anything but daycare.
My thoughts on this are simple and straight forward. In most cities and locales simply offering dog daycare will not be enough to take you from semi-comfortable to truly successful. If eking out a living, paying your bills, while working in the business so you can put away just enough to take a yearly vacation here and there (maybe) is your idea of success then by all means read no further. If, however, you would rather get to the level of having the freedom to work ON the business as opposed to being forced to work IN it, then I suggest you take these next few chapters to heart.
The difference being that working ON the business means you have sufficient income coming in so as to allow you to have the employees required to afford you the time to look at the business from the outside and make the strategic changes necessary to stay relevant and provide an excellent service to your customers. Conversely being forced to work in the business means that you are doing just that, you are the one sitting at the counter every day, checking in and out dogs, you are the one cleaning the play areas, you are the one cleaning the boarding suites, doing the paperwork, setting appointments, calling clients, handling customers, putting out fires, making marketing decisions, going to rescue events, taking sick dogs to the vet, and going home (no pun intended) dog tired each day knowing that tomorrow you will wake up at 6 a.m. to do it all over again. A never ending cycle that will repeat each and every day until you burn out which will be reflected in your attitude towards clients, their pets, the quality of service you provide and the upkeep of your facility or until you are put out of business by a more business savvy competitor.
Oddly this coincides with the fact that history tends to repeat itself and little in ourmodern time is in fact new. As demonstrated by the age old saying "The son of the shoemaker has no shoes" or "the cobbler's children go unshod." The meaning being that the shoemaker is always too busy making shoes for other people to make a pair for his own child. In other words, we often get so tied up in our work and providing for others that we forget to take care of our own children. The metaphor being that your business is your child, it is your baby, it needs you to grow, it needs you to survive and if you are so busy working for others each day that you are unable to work on it, it will eventually die.
It is important that you don't limit yourself and more over your ability to maximize the profit potential of your business by being afraid to offer a wide range of services to the 'pet owning' clients that come through your doors. In the years that I have been in business and teaching students from all over the globe how to enter and be successful in the pet care industry, most seem locked into the idea of becoming not only financially independent but wealthy through the operation of dog daycare. I think this is due to the fact that there is a bit of confusion as to what dog daycare is, and/or is not. In simplest terms dog daycare is the service of providing a location for owners to drop their dogs off to be watched, entertained and socialized during the day.
Many individuals wishing to start out in this industry mistakenly view dog daycare not as a service of the business, but as the entirety of the business and unfortunately limit their potential revenue stream. They become the local mom and pop dog daycare shop that offers one simple service and that's it. In essence they have effectively chose to eliminate the possibility of earning tens to hundreds of thousands in potential additional revenue each year by refusing to offer a wider range of services.
To the contrary I view dog daycare not as the entire business, but just one of the many services offered by the pet care business at the location. I believe the term "doggy daycare business" is a misnomer in much the same way as it would be a misnomer to call Super Wal-Mart a grocery store; as they provide much more than groceries, including furniture, automotive services etc. Your goal should be diversity and to have the capability to provide as many pet related services to your pet owning clients from your location as possible.
The unique advantage of owning/operating a pet services business is that you can, if you so choose offer a variety of services from one location. Why be a simple dog daycare when you can be a pet services business that provides dog daycare, pet boarding, pet grooming, training and pet related retail from the same location. Once you encompass all of these services into your business, you will know the intimate details of how each of these services operates and generates revenue. I can tell you now that I have never opened a standalone dog grooming salon, pet boarding kennel, nor a pet food store, but I have opened and offered all of these services combined from a single location on multiple occasions. Additionally I have as is the course of business, put out of business, competitors near my locations that chose to only offer one of these services as the mainstay of their business. I can also tell you unequivocally that I know much about how each of those services operates, how to open and run them successfully and more importantly how to incorporate and operate them all under one roof.
To that end let us start this augmentation to the manual by gaining an understanding of the most important fundamentals needed to operate a successful pet business. Contrary to what you may believe or may have heard, in the business of pet care it is not your money management, dog handling or advertising prowess that will make or break you. It is the ability to communicate clearly with and understand not only what your pet owning client requests, but the type of person they are. While it is beneficial to have dog skills, dogs don’t pay the bills; their owners do. Therefore it is the owners that you must befriend, convince and build trust with in order to stay in business. While this may sound easy, especially if you are the amiable people oriented type, this is not always the case. Why? Because you are dealing with what many clients believe is their child.
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